A friend of mine thinks he’d do better with a PDA, but doesn’t know the first thing about them, and neither do I, really.
He says he wants to manage phone numbers, addresses, e-mail addresses, two page contracts (I think he wants to be able to load the text of them into the PDA and modify them on site), schedule reminders, calender, and mileage calculator.
This sounds fairly standard for what I’ve heard about PDAs, but are there some specific models he should be looking at?
If that’s all he wants, any model will do. However, if he can afford it, he should get 8 megs of memory instead of 2. The extra space will come in handy.
My favorite PDA is a Little Black Book. Yeah, a little bound set of paper pages, and a pen. I have found that people who are too disorganized to use a compulsively organized system like Filofax or Daytimer don’t get much benefit from PDAs. I personally would wait on a PDA until the new generation of 3G wireless devices comes online. For example:
http://ezaurus.com/mie21/variation/index.html
Skip the screwed up Japanese text display and scroll to the bottom. These machines have 3G wireless high speed net connections sufficient for full video. And check out the integrated keyboard. Cool.
I have had good luck with a Palm M 505.
Worked well for me
For your friend, I’d recommend an iPaq.
I decided on a Blackberry, but I needed a wireless email solution first and foremost. If I didn’t have the Blackberry, I’d own an iPaq.
The uses you describe are, indeed, pretty standard fair and he could easily buy a PDA that does all of these things (I know, for certain, that each of these functions can be done with what comes standard on every Palm model currently being sold).
If he ever envisions doing any sort of wireless web browsing on a 3 inch screen, then he should look into models that do that sort of thing. Otherwise, it’s usually a fairly expensive add-on to not use.
There are two main classes of PDA these days, Palm and PocketPC. The main Palm brands are Palm and Handspring. Palm-based machines are much cheaper and feature all of the “standard” PDA features (like the ones you described) with a simple-to-use interface. They also have been embraced by the shareware development community, with a far greater number of applications available for the Palm platform. Palm devices are also available with a B&W screen, for those that don’t wish to pay extra for color. The only real recommendation I would make would be to get an 8 meg model instead of a 2 meg model. And, if he’s going to be doing a lot of editing in the field, he should probably get the detachable keyboard.
PocketPC aims to be more of a laptop-replacement. They have more memory, but don’t hold that against the Palm. While I’ve never used more than 4 meg total of my palm’s memory, at least 4 megs would be gone from a PocketPC before you even got to enter anything into it. They do have much better screens for color applications, and are easier to tightly integrate with MS’s windows applications (outlook, word, etc, all have PocketPC versions). I’ve also been told that their handwriting recognition is a bit better. PocketPC models also tend to have a shorter battery life. The two main lines of PocketPC PDAs are Compaq’s iPaq and HP’s Jornada.
When I chose a Palm, it was primarily a price thing. I could have bought a three year old laptop for the price of an iPaq, and it would have been a heck of a lot more useful.
And Chas, I am one of those people who were too disorganized to use a Little Black Book that have gotten enormous benefit from my PDA. PDAs make many functions much, much easier to do, understand, and remember. A daytimer will not start beeping when you have an apointment coming up, or when it’s your wife’s birthday next week. You cannot enter all of the groceries that you’ve ever bought, and then select which of these you have to buy each week cleanly onto notebook paper.
It’s also hard to play a game of solitare on a Filofax when you’re stuck in that meeting…Bottom line is that I was disorganized because the amount of effort that I was willing to spend to get organized was less than the amount of effort required to get organized using pen and paper methods, but it was more than the effort required to get organized with a PDA.
-LV
I work at MobilePlanet, a reseller of PDAs. I have extensive expertise in this area. How much is your friend willing to spend?
I must not be very up to date with the latest technology because everytime I see PDA I think Public Display of Affection, not some little hand held James Bond digital blackbook/computer/telephone/hot place/toilet paper dispenser/swiss army knife/light saber thingymabob.
I’m 17, I ought to know this stuff. Gheez.
sigh PlaTe! Plate! Plate! Plate!
This is what I get for skipping that lovely little preview button.